About six weeks ago I received the following e-mail from my Congressman:
A Creative Way to Support Your Library
Across America, libraries have for many years been fixtures in our communities, where they serve as both centers for the pursuit of learning and gathering places for the exchange of news and ideas.
While the difficult economic times have posed challenges for many libraries across our nation, there are creative avenues of support for these important community institutions. With the assistance of the Library of Congress, for example, your local library, or school library, can diversify its book collection for free and enhance children’s learning in the process.
The Library of Congress conducts a unique book donation program that helps educational institutions and certain nonprofit tax-exempt organizations build their library collections and introduce children to a greater variety of books. As the world’s largest repository of books and other texts, the Library of Congress possesses more than 130 million items. It receives approximately 20,000 items each day, of which only half is catalogued for the library’s own permanent collection.
These remaining items are given to the Library of Congress Surplus Books Program, which is comprised of a variety of books, audio and visual cassettes, and some maps. Most of these materials are meant for secondary and higher education levels, but there are often items appropriate for elementary school-aged children as well. Stock changes frequently as books are received and donated daily, but there is always an assortment of thousands of fiction and nonfiction items on the humanities, history, area studies, social sciences, education, science, and foreign languages.
To learn more, non-profit, educational, and government institutions and organizations wishing to participate in the Library of Congress Surplus Books Program should contact my Washington, D.C. office at 202.225.4806. I encourage anyone interested in this unique and wonderful program to take advantage of it today.
Sincerely,
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry
My initial reaction on reading the headline was to actually praise Representative Fortenberry. Since then I’ve done some research. Trouble is, here’s how it actually works: (emphasis added)
The Library of Congress has surplus books available to educational institutions (including full-time tax-supported or non-profit schools, school systems, colleges, universities, museums, and public libraries), public bodies (agencies of local, state, or national government), and non-profit tax-exempt organizations in the United States having tax-exempt status under Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1964.
These surplus books are miscellaneous in character and are not organized in any systematic way, although they are arranged on shelves for on-site inspection by authorized representatives of qualifying organizations. The collection usually contains only a small percentage of publications at the primary and secondary school levels.
Since there is a constant turnover in its size and content, the value of the material available at any one time may not justify the expense of sending a representative to Washington solely for the purpose of selecting from this collection. Members of the Library staff are prohibited from making selections on behalf of participating organizations. An eligible organization may authorize a representative, including a person in the Washington area, to make selections on its behalf by designating, in writing, the name of the representative in a letter of introduction to the Acquisitions Fiscal & Support Office.
Participating organizations are responsible for all costs of removing/shipping material from the Library.
So, what my congressman is suggesting is that people in Nebraska send their surplus books to DC, and then Nebraska libraries need to have someone in DC pick the books on their behalf (or I suppose they could send a staff person to DC) and then pay to have those books transferred back to Nebraska.
Unless I’m missing some salient point in all this, sorry Representative Fortenberry but your suggestions is a great big ball of fail.
